Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Windows 11 Trash Party

birchtree.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 523 posts

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#51

Post by adithyassekhar »

goosedragons wrote: post #44
adithyassekhar wrote: post #30

Edit: I'm comparing it with Windows 10. For me it felt like Microsoft lost it's way after 8.1 and now coming back to the Windows 7 way of things. Design wise aero looks similar. Windows 11 has been the most beautiful most stable and consistent windows I've ever used. It feels like a modern and rock stable update of Windows 7. I never got a blue screen or anything bad. Finally it feels like Microsoft is trying to make…

Did you get a lot of blue screens with 7 through 10? Or Vista even? Besides one PC that 7 vehemently disagreed with (couldn't run 7 for more than 5 minutes) I think I've had 2 in the past decade. Personally I think Windows 11 is ugly, the rounded corners, the whole way the icons are shaded, especially the junk they stick in the search bar. The new context menu is HORRID. It itself is inconsistent! So I'm baffled to s…

I was thinking of all the bsod complaints some people where posting in other Windows related threads. You're right I didn't had bsod's on windows 7 to 11. Except on 8.1 for some reason but I blame it on the hardware, it was getting old at that point.

Windows 11 did feel weird to me when it launched but when I went back to 10 after a year on it, 10 felt archaic.

I agree the context menu is not for everyone, I still use the old one. By consistent I meant it feels like the rest of the OS. I should edit that to prevent further confusion. Notepad++ recently updated to support Windows 11 context. Saw it in a changelog, I don't use the new context so can't say for sure.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#52

Post by gibspaulding »

prox wrote: post #29
userbinator wrote: post #5

Windows is definitely adware now. Microsoft saw how much the average user would install, and thought "we can do that too"; of course, by being "official", their own adware is much harder to remove. Windows can show the weather in the bottom left of the task bar, which is nice I've never wanted that feature nor found it appealing. I can just look outside if I want to know the weather where I am, or visit a site otherw…

I ran a debloating app on Win11 and I have never ever seen an app, even after countless installs. I am in Europe, so I wonder if there is also a different install here.

They work in the states as well. It's ridiculous that you have to run a third party app to make your OS usable out of the box, but it did work, and I haven't even had much trouble with settings flipped back with updates so far.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#53

Post by hestefisk »

userbinator wrote: post #23
sho_hn wrote: post #4

If you've never used an older Windows, here is a Win 2000 in the browser: https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=win2k.cfg&mem=192&gr... (The Qemu.js post on the front page today lead me there via a readme link to jslinux.)

I wonder how much it would take to get explorer.exe and the rest of the UI (userland) from Win2k running on a newer version of Windows. Backwards-compatibility has been MS' strong point for a long time, and the majority of other applications from the 2k era would probably be fine on Win11 too.

I would do anything for a modern version of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Now THAT was a professional OS. I would even pay for it.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#54

Post by StillBored »

WWLink wrote: post #36
nstart wrote: post #31

Windows is my daily driver. I actually like the OS but Microsoft would do well to listen to these concerns being raised consistently. They need to ask some deep questions of themselves of what they want Windows to be. This reminds me of the days where Ballmers goal seemed to be to lock everyone into Windows and MS products when the real upside turned out to be “make MS products fully available where people already ar…

> Like what does it want to be? Is it an OS or an advertisement platform. It's an OS created for enterprise corporations to support and manage the actions of their employees in a digital world. First and foremost. Most MS products are. The ad platform is MS trying to find ways to continue growing profits. :D

Nah, few enterprises have asked for any of this trash either. I'm pretty sure that most of them would be perfectly happy with a windows 98 style GUI, that supported modern hardware. They don't want all this churn either, they want something that is stable, doesn't change very fast and doesn't require them to constantly retrain their staff or waste their IT admins time fighting with whatever new options require a new set of group policies.

AKA, the new control panel that has been evolving.. most users are likely locked out of it for anything more advanced than changing the sound volume, its the IT nerds that need to figure out the optimal set of setting and push it out. Which is work that the C*'s would be more than happy to not have to pay IT staff to perform.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#55

Post by try_the_bass »

giantrobot wrote: post #50
throwaway8503 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful as an excuse for the OS to be continuously connected to the internet, which elides nicely into connecting to the internet for search results when you type something in the searchbox. And you can't argue that it's /useless/. It's more information, and, ceteris paribus, more information is better.

The problem is it's not data for you , it's data for Microsoft they turn around and sell. Every ping to their servers is more and more tracking data on you. If you sign into the OS with a Microsoft account, which is virtually required with Windows 11, they've got all of that data correlated with you personally rather than some ID string.

> The problem is it's not data for you, it's data for Microsoft they turn around and sell.

Why can't it be both? Being data for Microsoft doesn't preclude it from also being data for you. Being able to just put in a query without having to fire up a browser might be a marginal improvement for a lot of people.

And Microsoft doesn't sell you data. No advertising platform does. They sell access to you, by using your data to classify you in ways you can be targeted. It's a subtle difference, but it changes the implications. If someone is making money off of being able to reliably target you based on your data, that means your data is precious to them. Selling it (or losing it) is tantamount to selling their competitive advantage, such as it may be.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#56

Post by ghotli »

gigel82 wrote: post #6

> there is no way to turn this news feed off There are several layers to "turning it off". You can use Personalization -> Taskbar to turn off the "Widgets" icon which takes care of the immediate problem. But widgets.exe will continue running in the background, and the only way I found to get rid of that is winget uninstall "Windows Web Experience Pack"

You're the real MVP on this thread. Thanks, I'll be moving to 11 on my next computer here shortly and the msn news infection I think will be the most frustrating bit.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#57

Post by CatWChainsaw »

prox wrote: post #29
userbinator wrote: post #5

Windows is definitely adware now. Microsoft saw how much the average user would install, and thought "we can do that too"; of course, by being "official", their own adware is much harder to remove. Windows can show the weather in the bottom left of the task bar, which is nice I've never wanted that feature nor found it appealing. I can just look outside if I want to know the weather where I am, or visit a site otherw…

I ran a debloating app on Win11 and I have never ever seen an app, even after countless installs. I am in Europe, so I wonder if there is also a different install here.

Which ones do you recommend?

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#58

Post by jmclnx »

> That's when Windows died for me

I never really used it at home, I went from DOS to Coherent to Linux/BSDs. But from the Work Computers I had, I found one of the NT (around 2000/2005) interesting. Then XP came out, but by then I was on Linux at work.

I do not know how to replicate early PC usage these days where you poke around with the commercial OSs we have now. Maybe a Linux/BSD would be fun for a youngster to mess around with. You can still start with text mode and create silly to useful applications without GUI complexity.

One example for a young person is to pull raw weather data from NOAA and create your own analysis applications using it.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#59

Post by CatWChainsaw »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #38

is any of this not able to be disabled? uninstalling is disabling, but better. sure, it is annoying to have crapware installed by the manufacturer. maybe my test potato isn’t powerful enough to warrant using windows as more than something on which to run a browser. poorly. ignoring that detail, windows 11 is fine as windows goes.

I recall that you can't uninstall Edge because it shows up in weird places all over the system.

As for disabling, maybe some of it can be disabled. If the myriad anecdotes across the web are to be believed, however, then updates have a tendency to silently re-enable settings or revert defaults almost at random.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#60

Post by xbar »

hestefisk wrote: post #53
userbinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much it would take to get explorer.exe and the rest of the UI (userland) from Win2k running on a newer version of Windows. Backwards-compatibility has been MS' strong point for a long time, and the majority of other applications from the 2k era would probably be fine on Win11 too.

I would do anything for a modern version of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Now THAT was a professional OS. I would even pay for it.

I rode Windows NT 4.0 into the ground. It was a truly professional operating system.

Honestly, Windows 7 and Windows 10 have been configurable into a mostly serviceable state. It was much more of a hassle to keep Windows 10 tamed, but tamed it can be.

I worry that Windows 11 will require a bunch of disassembly to get it operational, so I will keep Windows 10 until it is no longer supported.

Post reply on HN